Documentary-maker Ken Burns takes a sip of 'Prohibition'

HOLLYWOOD -- "Boardwalk Empire" launched its story in season one at the onset of Prohibition, the subject of an upcoming three-part PBS documentary miniseries by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

PBS'Prohibition.'

There's plenty of drama in that subject for both, and Burns is a fan of the HBO series.

"Boardwalk Empire" returns for its second season Sept. 25. "Prohibition" debuts Oct. 2.

"I've really enjoyed watching it," said Burns during the Summer TV Tour. "It's terrific. I think they have another huge hit on their hands in the mode of 'The Sopranos,' and they're not that dissimilar. Americans always love to watch people who get to kill people (who) piss them off and women who take their clothes off at the drop of a hat.

"They've done their homework. It's very complex and nuanced, and they've found many of not just the primary characters, but the secondary and tertiary ones. We're always amazed, when we've done films, that it seems to, for many of the films, fit into the zeitgeist of the moment. And while I'm sure we began work on this project well before it was even a gleam in their eye -- we do not have the resources of HBO, so it takes us a little bit longer, and we like to do it right and dive deep down into the subject -- it was nice to see it received so well. I don't think I've missed an episode, and thrilled that they've got a second season."

A theme of Burns' film is the unintended consequences of the "dry" movement, one of which is the rise of organized crime from which "Boardwalk Empire" derives its story.

The story's political topicality is also striking.

"If I told you that I had been working with Lynn for several years on a film about single issue political campaigns, wedge issue campaigns that metastasized with horrible unintended consequences, if the story was about the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States and, as always, African Americans, if I told you we’d been working on a film that involved smear campaigns during presidential elections or unfunded congressional mandates or, more importantly, a whole group of people who felt they’d lost control of their country and wanted to take it back, you would insist that we had abandoned our historical interests and were covering the contemporary political scene," Burns said.

"We don’t have a political axe to grind or to make some political points. All of those similarities that I pointed out to you have to be inferred in the course of this film. You know, at one point when German Americans are enemies, we changed the name of sauerkraut to liberty cabbage.

"They resonate, and one begins to understand as Ecclesiastes does that human nature always is the same. We leave it up to our audiences to forge those connections, but I think towards the end of the film, we make a very strong point that Prohibition and its abject failure didn’t do anything about alcoholism. That’s a real problem, and it’s a bittersweet way to leave this film. The impulse at the beginning of the film to solve it remained at the end of this film, at the end of the Prohibition era, and we have not solved it.

"But we are certainly suspicious of these single issue attempts to, with the stroke of a pen or the creation of an amendment, to somehow forever enshrine into our Constitution solutions that take a much more nuanced and, I would suggest, democratic solution."

Prohibition traces the rise and fall of the 18th Amendment. It is, says Burns, a sad cautionary tale of a social experiment gone wrong — with girls and guns.

"The conventional image of the Prohibition era is, of course, the rain-slicked Chicago streets around which the Model T is careening, machine guns blasting, or the flapper who is shimmying in her miniskirt with her bobbed hair," says Burns, who is once again co-directing and co-producing with Lynn Novick. "We have a lot of that, and it is very exciting and sexy violent.

One of the best lines from a "Prohibition" clip shown is writer Pete Hamill's observation that making prohibition the law of the land is to "pass a law that would imprison Jesus if he turned water into wine."

When asked whether he was a teetotaler, Burns joked, “I had my first drink of the year today. I usually don’t drink because I have so much work but I thought, just to make you all happy, I’d have one here.”

As for future projects, before the press conference Burns said he has laid out a 10-year plan with films that include the history of the Dust Bowl; a look back at the infamous 1989 Cental Park Jogger assault and rape case; a 14-hour examination of the lives and legacies of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; a biography of Jackie Robinson; an extensive series on Vietnam; the history of country music; and a biography of Ernest Hemingway.